I’ve just added two new short stories to my list. “Tithe” is my contribution to the Human Tales anthology, while “Twenty-One-Oh” is my contribution to Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero, a combination fiction and anthology and musical soundtrack. You can click around to see more about each of ‘em.

I’m actually not certain when either anthology is due out on shelves, but I’ll let people know as soon as I do.

I hope to have more news–both short story-related and other–in the near future. Check back, same mouse time, same mouse channel.

The upcoming issue of Black Gate (that’s number 15, I believe) contains a review of The Conqueror’s Shadow. While I don’t expect any of you to pick it up just for that, if you’re at all a fan of sword-and-sorcery fiction, you owe it to yourself to check BG out. It’s one of the finest sources of short fantasy fiction around today.

And speaking of The Conqueror’s Shadow, I want to remind everyone that the mass market paperback printing is available for pre-order right now, and should be hitting shelves at the end of December–making it a perfect book to order as a holiday gift for your friends and relatives. (Plug, plug, plug. ) Seriously, if you’ve wanted to take a look but didn’t want to pay for the hardcover–well, as they say, someday your prints will come. And that day has arrived.

If any of you are in or near the Austin area, you might want to swing by Dragon’s Lair next Saturday (the 16th) for their Halloween event. In addition to various other goodies and events, a number of authors will be there for signings, including Gabrielle Faust, Matthew Sturges, Victor Gischler, and a number of others–including myself.

Dragon’s Lair should have most of my current edition gaming material (D&D 4E and Vampire: the Requiem), if you want to pick up something to get signed while you’re there. But they don’t carry much in the way of fiction, so if you want me to sign The Conqueror’s Shadow or Agents of Artifice, you’ll probably want to run by a bookstore before heading over.

You can find out more details of their Halloween event here. Hope to see some of you there.

So it appears that I’ll be a guest at YuleCon, a combination anime/manga and gaming convention. (Guess which side of that topic divide I’ll be speaking on. ) It’s held in Dallas, the weekend of November 12.

Don’t yet have a panel/event schedule, but as soon as I do, I’ll post it.

I’ve also just signed to contribute an essay to a non-fiction book on writing fantasy. More details on that once the project is formally announced.

Okay, DragonCon starts in a couple of days. Because I waited until the last minute to decide I was going, I don’t have as many events scheduled as I’d like, and I’m not sure when some of my panels are actually happening.

So far, here’s the deal:

Friday, 7:00 PM: Pyr Author’s panel.

Sunday, 9:00 AM: “Stroll with the Stars.”

I’ll probably be doing more than that, but those are the only two for which I currently have a set time. Hope to see some of you there.

This is a very strange moment for me; it’s odd to think of my prose appearing in other languages. (I wonder how they’re going to manage the puns… ) But I’m absolutely ecstatic over this, and quite flattered as well.

Details–publication dates and all that–to be provided when I have them.

Since the existence of the project is already public, I’ve been told that I’m allowed to tell people that I’m working on the new 4E version of Ravenloft!

(That’s the RPG coming out next year, not the board game coming out in a few weeks.)

Obviously, I can’t talk about what I’m doing. And I should say that I’m really only doing a very little bit. The bulk of the work is being done in-house; I’m not sure if I’m even going to have a cover credit (though I sure hope so), and I have no real say in the core design.

Nevertheless, I’m stoked. I’ve been a huge Ravenloft goob for ages. I got to contribute to only a single Ravenloft book back in 3E, when White Wolf licensed it. And while I got to write a Ravenloft novel, it would up only being published online. So this will be my first time to get my name on a major, printed Ravenloft release.

But, one certainly hopes, not my last.

(Hmm. That’s 2/3rds of the way to a trifecta: Ravenloft and Dark Sun are two of my three all-time favorite classic D&D campaign settings. Now I just need to get my grubbies on a new version of Al-Qadim, and I’ll be set.)

First off, I’ll be doing several panels at ArmadilloCon (August 27-29) right here in Austin at the Renaissance Hotel. At the moment, my schedule looks like this:

Friday, 5:00 PM–Anti-Heroic Fantasy: Flawed to Very Flawed Heroes, in the Sabine room.

Saturday, 11:00 AM–Gaming and Its Impact on Writing, also in the Sabine room.

Sunday, 11:00 AM–The Heroic Quest, Making it Interesting, also also in the Sabine room. (I should just camp out there.)

Sunday, 2:00 PM–signing, in the dealer’s room.

Now, I probably won’t be spending too much time at the con outside of my panels and signing, as I have work to do over that weekend as well. But if any of you are in the Austin area, or can make it down, I’d love to see you.

I will also be doing DragonCon, in Atlanta, over the weekend of September 3rd. I don’t yet have a fixed schedule, other than doing the “Stroll with the Stars” at 9:00 AM on Sunday. But as soon as I have anything scheduled, I’ll post it.

Nothing too major to announce today… Except that The Conqueror’s Shadow will be getting a UK release. And no, I don’t just mean that copies of it will be available in the UK; I mean a specific printing by a UK publisher, for the UK market.

I guess this means I’m an international author, now. That’s–kinda weird, actually.